More Heroic Failures

The Most Unsuccessful Fight Against the 
Government 
 
In 1964 enemies of the Italian government were planning 
to take over the government in Rome. They ordered their 
men to meet outside the city. Luckily, most of them did 
not know Rome very well and got lost in the small streets 
on the way to the city centre. 
The government did not hear about the plan until five 
years later, when they immediately tried to get more 
information about it. 
In 1974 there was another plan of the same kind in the 
south of Italy that was a failure, too. This time it was not 
because they got lost. One of them explained, ‘It was 
raining too hard.’ 
The Most Unsuccessful Dancer 
In
 
1977 ambulance men carried Signor Paco Vila, a 
student from Palermo in Italy, out of a night club because 
a girl touched him. 
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The Most Unsuccessful Dancer 

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‘I love big English women,’ he said when he woke up 
in a hospital bed. ‘But they laugh at me because I am not 
heavy enough.’ 
He was really quite thin and he bravely decided to do 
something about this. He started to wear thick pullovers 
under his shirt. 
That night at the club he dressed himself well and a girl 
wanted to dance with him. She was an English girl on 
holiday in Palermo. 
During one of
 
his faster dances he got very tired. When 
the girl touched him, he fell to the floor. Later, in 
hospital, doctors found seventeen pullovers under his 
shirt. 
The Most Unsuccessful Lovers 
One day in 1976 Dr Brian Richards of Deal in Kent was 
in Regent’s Park in London, He saw a man, with very 
few clothes on, enjoying himself in the back of a sports 
car with his girlfriend. Suddenly the man hurt his back. 
Because the man hurt himself badly and could not 
move, his girlfriend was unable to get out of the car and 
ask for help. So she screamed. 
Dr Richards, an ambulance man, a fireman and a large 
crowd of other people heard her screams. They all stood 
in a circle round the car. ‘You’ll never get them out of 
there,’ said the fireman and started cutting the back off 
the car. 
During this time, two women served tea through the car 
window. 
In the end they carried the lover to hospital. Ambulance 
men told the girlfriend not to worry. ‘I’m not 
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worried about him,’ she answered. ‘How am I going to 
explain to my husband? It was his car.’